Headlines for 05-30-08

Gaza woman dies of wounds after Israeli fire: medics A 60-year-old Palestinian woman died on Friday of wounds she sustained when gunshots were fired from an Israeli military position near her home in the Gaza Strip, medics and relatives said.


Tutu: Silence on Gaza blockade shames us all Archbishop Desmond Tutu has denounced the international community for its "silence and complicity" on what he called Israel's "abominable" 11-month blockade of Gaza.


U.S. Withdraws Fulbright Grants to Gaza The American State Department has withdrawn all Fulbright grants to Palestinian students in Gaza hoping to pursue advanced degrees at American institutions this fall because Israel has not granted them permission to leave. WTF? Wow.


House members press Swiss on Iran deal


Student trapped in Gaza asks Blair for help to beat travel ban For Mr Abuajwa and many other students seeking to study abroad, the description of Gaza as a "big prison" is more than just a slogan


More rockets hit south; Islamic Jihad claims responsibility


Egyptian efforts to broker truce with Israel fruitless


One civilian dies of wounds sustained on Wednesday


Act Now! Stop the Closing of Orphanages and Schools in Hebron by the Israeli Military It is therefore of utmost importance that all NGOs and internationals who have been involved in this campaign continue to pressure their governments to insist that Israel not only stop this action but also pay restitution for the losses suffered by the institutions involved. Please contact your Congress Representatives or Members of Parliament as soon as possible.



Is President Bush becoming irrelevant? by Patrick J. Buchanan Neoconservative ideology, not U.S. national interests, McClellan is saying, motivated Bush to launch one of the longest and most divisive wars in U.S. history.....Israel has ignored Bush's demand that it stop building and expanding settlements on a West Bank that is to be the heartland of a Palestinian state. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has been secretly negotiating with Syria for the return of the Golan Heights in exchange for peace. Another gem by Mr. PJB.


Rice to check why US cancels grants to Palestinian scholars US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice vowed Friday to look into a report that her department has scrapped grants to Palestinian scholars because they could not get Israeli approval to leave Gaza. It is doubtful that she will actually do anything about it.


Israel seeks international peace talks amid political uncertainty Amid political uncertainty in Israel and the United States, the Jewish state's deputy prime minister Haim Ramon called Friday for an international conference to forge an interim Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.


Israel uses gunfire to repel Hamas border rally


Thousands protest Gaza blockade Thousands of people joined the demonstration called by Hamas to demand that Israel lift its crippling blockade of the impoverished enclave


Talking to Hamas As for the latest announcement that Syria and Israel are prepared to open peace talks again, Mishaal said that he supports Syria's decision but that he believes these talks will come at the expense of the more difficult and complicated Palestinian negotiations.....Mishaal acknowledged that the Carter visit was "fruitful," and he repeated his pledge to Carter that Shalit would be allowed to write a letter to his family. "The president requested the letter, and it's out of respect for Carter we have agreed to that. We requested from our brothers in Gaza that they allow that letter, and it will be coming soon."


Palestinians pin biz hopes on high-tech industry


Fatah calls for Arab efforts to reconcile with Hamas


B'tselem: Israel refuses to issue ID cards to unregistered Palestinians Since the occupation began in 1967, Israel has exercised almost total control over the Palestinian population registry and has sole power to determine who is a Palestinian resident.


AIPAC draft agenda: Iran, peace, terrorism Much of a draft proposal obtained by JTA focuses on backing existing efforts in Congress and elsewhere to further isolate Iran until it ends its suspected nuclear weapons program. The agenda also promotes Israel's qualitative military edge in the region and the peace process.


Dozens captured in Israeli incursion in Gaza: witnesses Israeli troops used loudspeakers to order residents of the Beit Hanun area aged 16 to 60 to gather in a square, and then took away about 60 of them, according to Mohammed al-Kafarneh, who said he witnessed the incident.


PLC slams the Israeli abduction of assistant of the detained Legislative Council head Srour lives in the West Bank city of Ramallah and was kidnapped by the army after the soldiers broke into his home and searched it.


Wild pigs attack Palestinian farmers in several West Bank areas


Chertoff: Hezbollah Makes Al Qaeda Look 'Minor League' JERUSALEM ? Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff warned Thursday that the radical Islamic group Hezbollah "makes Al Qaeda look like a minor league team," and poses the greatest threat to national security. WHOSE national security would that be? He's utterly insane if he was referring to the nation that he is SUPPOSED to be serving - AMERICA.


American Jewish Committee Won't Touch Hagee on Holocaust; Silence from AIPAC, ADL


Japan gives 5.7 million US dollars for food aid to Palestine refugees


Jimmy Carter is right to say the unsayable This week at the Hay book festival, despite asserting that Israel?s security was his prime concern, his criticism of Israel?s actions on the West Bank and Gaza was far beyond sentiments ever issued by a leading US politician in office. ?It is politically impossible for anyone holding public office or running for it to be critical of Israel,? he said, while accusing European governments of a ?supine? approach.


Bin Laden turns his mind to Israel in one recent statement he called Palestine "my nation's pivotal issue". It was, he declared, "an important factor in giving me since childhood, and giving the 19 free men (who carried out the 9/11 attacks), an overwhelming feeling that we must stand by the oppressed and punish the unjust Jews and their backers."In fact, Palestine has never been an operational priority for the group.



Search Is Urged for Syrian Nuclear Sites The Bush administration is pressing U.N. inspectors to broaden their search for possible secret nuclear facilities in Syria, hinting that Damascus's nuclear program might be bigger than the single alleged reactor destroyed by Israeli warplanes last year. The 'evidence' of that alleged reactor destroyed by Israel was largely provided BY ISRAEL, according to former CIA counterterrorism official Philip Giraldi.


Israel Imposes a 10-Year Ban on American Critic of Israeli Policies


Hezbollah says ready to discuss defense strategy but not give up weapons


Syrian source: Israel did not ask us to sever ties with Iran


New type of migrant settles in Sderot In the last few years, a growing number of collaborators from Gaza have ended up in the Israeli town of Sderot, the place that, more than any inside Israel, has come under missile fire from Palestinian militants in Gaza.


Neo-Cons Silent on Hagee Repudiation by McCain it was the neo-cons, mainly Irving Kristol and Commentary?s former editor, Norman Podhoretz, who, like the Likud party (whose then-leader, Prime Minister Menahim Begin, gave the late Jerry Falwell his first private jet), saw Christian Zionists as a key political constituency in the U.S. that would mobilize effectively against any inclination by a future U.S. president to pressure Israel to dismantle Jewish settlements on the West Bank or remove Jewish settlers from East Jerusalem as part of a peace deal with the Palestinians


Interfaith group blasts Dunkin' on keffiyeh "Enough already," Rev. C. Welton Gaddy, the alliance's president, said in a statement. "Have we really reached the point where we are associating wearing a scarf of Middle Eastern origin with terrorist sympathies? Should we apply this standard to everything that comes from the Middle East? Or are we only applying this standard to our wardrobe?"



Thomas' oft-ignored view happily received It was a great pleasure to read the excellent May 19 column by Helen Thomas. The column about the plight of the Palestinian people went right to the point of the treatment they received.


Commentary overlooked Israel's bias against non-Jews


USC, UCLA professors work on Israeli-Palestinian archaeological pact


ISRAEL @ 60 ? Inside the Neturei Karta


U.S. vows to reach Middle East peace deal


Council of Religious Institutions calls for ceasefire, condemns Bible burnings The religious leaders released two statements, one calling for an end to the violence in the Holy Land and the other denouncing the recent Bible burnings in Or Yehudah.


Germany: Our responsibility for Holocaust commits us to Israel


EVANG LUTHERAN CHURCH OF FINLAND DELAGATION VISITS JORDAN & PALESTINE The Palestinian
Office Head called on churches in the world to raise the motto of: ³it is
time for the birth of the Palestinian State², and called for the immediate
lifting of the siege against Gaza



Jewish GOPers to broadcast board Halperin of New Jersey is a former chairwoman of the Republican Jewish Coalition and once led a campaign against perceived anti-Israel bias at National Public Radio, one of the institutions that receives CPB funding.


DHS Looks to Adopt Israeli Airport Security Methods While in Jerusalem for a conference attended by public and homeland security ministers from around the world, Chertoff signed an agreement with Israel to share technology and information on methods to improve homeland security. An incredibly unwise move. That's the last thing we should be doing.


Britain looked to Israel when studying military deception After Egypt blocked the strategic Straits of Tiran and expelled U.N. forces from the Sinai Desert, Israel launched pre-emptive strikes on June 5, 1967, against Egyptian and Syrian air forces, destroying them on the ground. In six days of one-sided battles, Israeli forces captured the West Bank, Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip and Sinai from Jordan, Syria and Egypt. In an unsigned, top secret military document, that war was cited as "an example of how deception can be employed in the modern era and in such a way that the enemy decision making process is placed at a severe disadvantage."




The 106-Year-Old Refugee In the process of making Chronicles of the Refugee, a six-part Arab language documentary series about the global Palestinian experience, Adam Shapiro came across a most unusual potential interview subject. At Yarmuk Camp in Damascus, Syria, he met Yusra, a woman born 46 years before the U.S. Partition of Palestine in 1948, making her 106 years of age.


Repairing Nahr al-Bared to cost $400 million


Dutch to give EUR 1.3m for Palestinian prisons The Netherlands is contributing EUR 1.3 million for the renovation of seven Palestinian prisons in the West Bank.


DSPR CENTRAL COMMITTEE & ROUND TABLE MEETINGS The Department of Service to Palestinian Refugees has concluded its Central
Committee meeting (May 7 - 9) and its Round Table meeting (May 10 -11).
The meeting of the Central Committee reviewed the work in the different
Areas (Gaza Strip, West Bank, Nazareth, Jordan Lebanon and Central Office)
and commended the continuing efforts of all in spite of great odds and
difficulties.



Sderot and Gaza: third letters Tell me how many UN resolutions concerning Palestine have been implemented? According to the UN, we have the right to return to our homes. Yet to this day, nothing has happened.


Dershowitz, in Teaneck, makes the case against Carter Before his presentation, Dershowitz spoke with this newspaper about his forthcoming book, "The Case Against President Carter and Other Israel?s enemies," due out in September. Unbelievable.


Saturday brings first wheelchair basketball season Sofan's background may help to ensure the success of the Saturday wheelchair basketball program. As a native Palestinian, Sofan played for the national wheelchair basketball team as well as the swimming and table tennis teams. He was also the coach of a Palestinian wheelchair basketball club.


Boycott US doughnut chain for halting scarf ad, activists urge "Dunkin Donuts has capitulated and withdrawn an advertisement for its products following the allegation ... that the spokeswoman in the ad was wearing a kaffiyeh, a scarf which is a staple of clothing traditionally worn by Palestinian men," the ANSWER Coalition said in a statement.